So, after seeing a couple of people comment on my short review of "Man of Steel," I got to thinking about how one would go about writing and interesting story about a basically invincible and fundamentally good-natured hero. Now, I know next to nothing about superhero comics, but I've seen a lot of Superhero movies, and many of them fail because the lead character just isn't that interesting. One idea that struck me, however, is that perhaps we don't need to update or modernize these characters so much as we need to return to their roots and learn from the classics.

More or less scholarly commentators on popular culture have made much of the idea that superheroes, and action heroes in general, are modern America's equivalent to the heroes that populate the myths and epics of the ancient world. While there's certainly some truth to that idea, the heroes of today's summer blockbusters are a far cry from Heracles or Achilles.

To focus on one example, Heracles was probably the closest classical analogue to a Superman-type character: invincible in battle, impossibly strong, and (mostly) virtuous by the standards of his time. Ultimately, however, he is a tragic figure, and is story is driven by encounters with forces he can't control.

As a youth, Heracles kills his music teacher by hitting him with a lyre in a momentary fit of anger. Later he's driven mad by the goddess Hera for a crime that wasn't even his own, which leads to him murdering his own wife and children. When he recovers, he is desperate to make amends, but the Oracle proclaims that his penance is to serve under a cruel King who not only assigns him tasks he believes are impossible, but cheats him into performing extra labors as well.

These events get us to sympathize with Heracles, and to identify with him, because getting cheated, making bad choices we later regret, and dealing with forces beyond our control are all pretty universal parts of the human experience. The storytellers of ancient Greece manage to get us to root for a nigh-invincible demigod because he's the underdog, which is a pretty clever trick.

Now, I'm not saying that superheroes should be murderers or psychopaths or driven by angst over a dark past; that's been done to death already, and it rarely worked to begin with. What I'm saying is that if you want an audience to become invested in a character, you have to show us his weakness *before* you show us his strength. Don't give us Superman as a paragon of heroism from the get-go; show him falter, and fail, and make mistakes; have him get tricked and taken advantage of.

Don't make him bitter, but have him doubt himself from time to time; have him ask for help and not know what to do; make him an honest guy trying to do his best in a world that, even with all his powers, he ultimately can't control.

Show us our own frailties in the character, so that when he triumphs in the end, his victory is *our* victory.

--

Of course, none of this really applies if you have access to Robert Downey jr. You can cast him as an asshole genius billionaire who spends most of his time partying and having sex, have him beat up on a fat, aging Jeff Bridges, and we'll *still* love him for some reason. :P